Linguistics experiment

This is a little experiment I’ll be doing for my bilingualism class next week which I thought I’d try out on you first.

Imagine you’re making a cartoon featuring the things listed below as characters. Which ones would you assign a male voice to, and which ones would you assign a female voice to?

1. A rock 2. A tree 3. A river 4. A bear 5. A salmon 6. A boat

Could you also tell us your native language, and whether you speak any other languages fluently? If you do speak other languages, when did you acquire them, do you use them regularly, and would you consider yourself bilingual or multilingual?

61 Responses to Linguistics experiment

my first language is english, but im half egyptian and lived in egypt for a long time, and i have a fair grasp of arabic, and also of spanish, which i learnt in school. ive studied other languages (japanese and portuguese), but not to a degree anywhere near fluency.

I’m a native American English speaker. I majored in Linguistics in college, and speak a smattering of German; I’ve started to learn Hindi and Japanese, but very slowly and presently have no skills to speak of.

I would make them all male except the boat.

That said, the bear and the salmon could be female without any cognitive dissonance, but male was my instinct.

Those would be my choices, basically all male except the river and the bear. I’m bilingual, so my native tongues are French and English, and I regularly use both everyday (only French for education though). Although I can also speak Japanese and Spanish, but not at a fluent level.

(I wish I knew why I think of the bear as female. I’m sure there’s some deep psychological reason.)

I’m English-Irish (there doesn’t seem a better way to put it than that, and I identify myself strongly with both sides of my heritage, so…). I wouldn’t consider myself bilingual or multilingual, though I speak some Welsh and French, a little Spanish, and know a tiny amount of German, Italian and Greek. I’m not fluent in any language except English.

1. A rock – male
2. A tree – female
3. A river – female
4. A bear – either
5. A salmon – either
6. A boat – female

1st language: English
2nd language: French (also spoken at home by mother and grandmother)
other languages studied: Latin, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, German, Greek (Greek currently spoken at home by husband – once he insisted, speaking to me in his sleep, that the Greek he was speaking was English)

My first language is English, but I speak French and Urdu fluently, read and understand (and speak but very badly) Punjabi, and can understand some Saraiki, Persian, Pashto, Italian and Spanish. I learnt all three of my main languages simultaneously, but reserve French and Urdu for specific family members and friends.
I identify myself as either trilingual or multilingual, depending on who’s asking and why.

My native language is Russian, I also speak Hebrew fluently, and I use them both daily. I’ve been living in Israel since the age of 13. My English is pretty good, too. I don’t actually speak it usually, but all my professional writing, mail, etc. is in English, and I also surf in English a lot. I’ve lived in the US at the age of 11.

1. male
2. male
3. female
4. male
5. male
6. female
Native French, English-Flemish second language. Got the boat female, I guess, because I worked on boats with many British people for many years.
I read about 15 languages, I am not fluent in anything, even French! I am not a talker.
The most beautiful talk about gender is still in George Lakoff’s “Women, fire and dangerous things. What categories reveal about the mind”. It contains a discussion about a dying language of Australia: Dyirbal, whereby anything dangerous is related to women and falls in a female category.

Native english, fluent in portuguese I picked up last year living in Brazil. I have a firm grip on Spanish. I consider myself multilingual. I don’t get to speak Portuguese regularly, but I read, listen, and write in it. I sometimes have opportunities to speak Spanish outside the classroom.

My stats:
Native English speaker.
I feel like I know these languages the best and wouldn’t feel too uneasy if I I were in a situation where I had to speak them:
Russian, Chinese, French, Spanish, Italian, Esperanto
These not quite as well: German, Ukrainian
I still have a ways to go but I know the main grammar and have a growing vocabulary: Persian
Also studied some Latin and a little Japanese.

I only really speak English fluently, but I think German and Latin (my best two other languages) have a significant influence.

I can explain most of my choices through these languages (this might be too much info):
1. In German der Stein (rock) is masculine
2. All trees are feminine in Latin, even if they should be masculine based of endings.
3. These words are masculine in German (der Fluss), and in Latin fluctus is masculine and flumen is neuter, but I just thought of river nymphs, I think.
4. This word is masculine in German (der Bär), in Ancient Greek (ἀρκτος / arktos), and can be feminine or masculine in Latin (ursa or ursus).
5. I just can’t pick one over the other.
6. This was because in English vehicles (especially boats) are traditionally referred to as she.

As I think about it, it copies genders in my native language (even though I ended up making up salmon’s gender without immediatelly knowing the exact translation only thinking about it as of “some sort of fish” and “fish” is “she” in Czech). Even though I can’t think of better gender for boat than female, even English still uses “she” to address ships…

I’m Czech and Slovak native speaker. I have been studying German and Russian, now studying Chinese (not fluent in these three). I consider myself pretty able to commuicate in English.

Salmon is not a native fish. So it’s difficult to make dicision. For salmon as a fish, I think of a strong fish and want to assign a male voice to. But for salmon as a food, it always comes with its roe and a female voice should be assigned to it.

My native tongue is Thai, which does not have grammatical gender. I also speak English and Russian. And I learned German in high school. I can speak English quite well, Russian not so well, and German not at all. I don’t call myslef bilingual.

Some word above in Thai shows its gender. River in Thai is ‘mae-nam’ (แม่น้ำ), which literally means ‘mother of water’ (mae mean mother and nam means water). Tree in Thai is ‘tonmai’ (ต้นไม้). ‘Ton’ can be a name for boy. So I assign a male voice.

Many thanks for all your comments. The aim of the experiment was to see whether those of you with grammatical gender in your native languages chose the voices according to the genders of the words in your languages.

Studies have found that speakers of languages with grammatical gender will often be guided by the genders when assigning voices to inanimate objects or judging their masculinity/femininity. Such effects are more noticeable in speakers of languages with two genders – speakers of three-gender languages, such as German, don’t necessarily follow the gender patterns of their languages.

Speakers of English and other languages that lack grammatical gender often assign female voices / feminine characteristics to natural objects, and male ones to artificial objects.

My native language is Indonesian, the other language which i speak fluently? It must be english. I have learnt it since it i was in my junior high school. I try to use it regularly. The other languages? Japanese. Just beginner level. I plan to test myself in yon-kyu, nihon-go noryokushiken (JLPT 4) this december. But, recently, Chinese has attracted me since olympiade in Beijing 4 months ago.

Studied french (started age 9), latin (age 10), german (age 12), classical greek and hebrew at uni (both to PhD level, whatever that means)
Fluent (C2+) Spanish (adult learner).
Use Spanish more than English in my work and relationships.

oh and I use Spanish and English daily, and Italian about once or twice a week. ITalian and English was spoken in my home from infancy, and Spanish I learned from grades 9 through university.
I would consider myself multi-lingual

None of my associations are to do with the gramatical gender of a word in any langauge, more how rough or gentle they are.

Native Mercian English speaker, learned French and Latin at school, currently have been working in Germany for 15 months. Know a logarithmically small and smaller amount of about 50 other spoken langauges, starting with Hungarian and Japanese.

1. male
2. male
3. female
4. male
5. male
6. male
Native language: Indonesian (Bahasa), Javanese
Other Language:
– fluent thai –&gt; i spent 4 years during high school in BKK
i still speak it regularly w/ my old mates
– French –&gt; used to be fluent but now I’m losing it…
had learned it since I was 4 years old
only use it for reading purposes…
– very good Lao –&gt; learned it when I was in high school..never
use it anymore..
– fluent english –&gt; My mum is an english teacher. She spoke
english with me even before I could speak. I
use it everyday, perhaps even more than
indonesian/javanese
– basic arabic –&gt; my dad used to teach me when I was 6
years old. Never enjoy it tho…
– basic spanish –&gt; and is improving….
Anyway, I consider myself to be multilingual…
cheers!